


What A Storm Brings

by Akaisha_Loire



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Bonding, Hermit!Nick, Hunter!Troy, M/M, Minor Violence, Rough Sex, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 08:55:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16302038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akaisha_Loire/pseuds/Akaisha_Loire
Summary: Troy needs to know why the white witch’s storm had led him there, and why the cabin had disappeared so quickly. He can’t sleep without dreams haunting him of seeing that cabin linger in the distance. It’s driving him to madness, but that was the price one paid in the pursuit of knowledge. He’d rather go insane ten times over then never know about the mysterious homeowner and his vanishing cabin.He becomes obsessed.





	What A Storm Brings

**Author's Note:**

> Today, I just sat down and typed my little heart out, this is what came out.
> 
> It honestly ended up shorted than I wanted it to be, but I hope you all still like.
> 
> For those that might want to avoid the sex scene, it's in the epilogue, so please feel free to skip it if sex scenes are not to your liking.

The cold was blistering, not unusual for the season.

It bit against his skin, a wolverine tearing at the delicate flesh of his body, ripping till there was nothing but bone to bear the brunt. Even under numerous pelts, there was no escape from the howling winds of the storm; a lone wolf crying out in the otherwise tranquil afternoon. A storm that had not been upon them in the early hours of their hunt, only appearing when the sun was its highest.

Under the layers of frost is a sweet taste, like strawberries hot in a pie, warm, inviting, enough to make the average man drop his guard to quest the source. Troy Otto was no ordinary man, seeing the trap for what it was, magic, woven by the hands of the white witch herself. Trained, gifted in the powers of ice, snow, frost, which she used to her advantage to deter them; he would not be deterred.

But even he, and his pride, was not so brazen as to not accept his fate. He had wandered far from his group, alone now, lost in the harsh, unforgiving mountains with nothing but the whispers of the witch’s magic to keep him company. Troy could have been wandering for hours, or seconds, he wouldn’t know the difference, there was no escaping the cyclone he stampeded into; short of killing the witch herself, and he would do so, with glee.

To do so, however, he needed to find shelter, quickly.

Troy knew these mountains, he spent his youth climbing them when his mother was out of her mind, through her fifth mead of the morning. He knew if you took a right at the largest rock on Bear Mouth’s trail, you’d be at a cave, unoccupied, high enough, to protect him from the elements. The only problem was, they’d past that rock before the storm hit, and now, through the white sheet of the blizzard, he could find no familiar landmarks to tell him his locale, as if he’d been forced into a world he didn’t know.

All he had to do was find one tree, one branch, that would point in the direction of any of the twenty trails that serpentined these peaks. Yet, gazing through his goggles, squinting into the storm, he saw nothing. Putting his hand out, hoping to brace himself, to feel some sort of familiarity with the land, nothing was there.

There was no doubt he was trapped in a witch’s snare.

Troy would not give the woman the satisfaction of winning. He’d continue on, even if his feet were heavy, feeling like they were sinking into the ground, like loose sand in the desert attempting to make him it’s own. Whether he wandered these hills for ten minutes or ten days, he would not yield.

He continued on, bowing against the wind that screeched like a bird of prey diving for a mouse, unguarded. His arm raised up to block, keeping his gaze on the horizon where even the witch’s magic couldn’t stop the sun from breaking through to offer him a view of the exit. Blinded to the world around him, his focus on that beam of light, and followed, on and on.

His lungs burn, a blue fire, searing hot, bright, real, under his chest, filling his lungs with darkest smoke that only causes a sharp, constant pain. His pulse was keetering as his body fought to keep him alive in this dire situation. He was sure if saw himself, he’d be blue at the lips, skin pale, falling to the cold. Despite his desperation, his need to stay alive in spite, his body wouldn’t hold out on him not much longer.

A thunk; he turns.

He heard it clearly. A thunk, in the emptiness around him like wood on wood, a sound he knew well from his years of building fires. It was chopped wood on top of other wood, there was a sound it made, a clattering, almost like pans hitting each other in the pantry.

Another thunk, and he’s moving towards the source of the sound.

Troy would be running, if he had the ability, instead he goes at an even pace, clinging like a mother to her cubs to each sound as they continued to come. There was someone, out there, in this storm, gathering wood, likely to warm a hearth, ward against the chill, and he needed to find them.

Each thunk, clatter, was a beacon, a light shining over the dark sea, guiding him on to the safety of land.

He tried to count the paces. Ten from wherever he had been before he started to see a shadow loom in the distance, a structure, no bigger than a room high with a gabled roof from what he can see. He moved onward, ten more paces, and he sees a fence, the outline of one, no higher than his waist, one intended for decorative purposes, not security. There’s no shadows of animals, but another five paces and he see something, or someone, moving within the other shadows, to and fro, back and forth, methodically.

Another seven and he’s close. Close enough to see that it is a home, square built, probably two rooms as was common to the inhabitants of the mountains, normally housing witches. The fence is a brown picket thing with a gate that led to a path, gravel, likely, under all the snow that had accumulated in the storm. The person, and he can see now its a person, is wrapped in layers of fabric, from head to toe, much like Troy himself, an attempt to keep every crevasse closed against the cold. They’re moving, quickly, gathering wood four logs at a time through an open door where Troy can see a fire intensely burning; salvation.

“Hey!” he tries to yell out, the scratch of his throat an eagle’s talon, resulting in a hacking cough instead of words. He keeps moving.

In three paces he can reach out, wrap his arm around the top of the gate, pulling, making it rattle.

The owner of the home stops, turning, looking at him. They seem to try to say something to him, the storm roars in response as if attempting to keep him from hearing. The person shakes their head, grabbing three more logs, heading in, closing the door, leaving Troy standing there, attempting to get his lead like legs to move in an effort to hop the fence.

The fact that he can’t get the gate open means it must be sealed with magic. This person was a witch, his garb gave him away as a hunter, they would be naive to let him in.

“You have to lift the latch!” a voice yells, and Troy startles, realizing his vision is swimming, wavering as his body attempts to finally shut down. He was seeing black, now he’s seeing the owner, who is flipping up a metal connector on the gate, shaking their head at Troy’s own failing.

Troy tries to find words, instead, he moves forward, more leaning than actual movement. The cabin dweller is right behind him, ushering him into the homestead, quickly closing the door, putting down a large wooden barricade against it. Perhaps this person wasn’t a witch, but cautious against them, Troy thought, as hands touched his shoulders, guiding him to sit on a stool next to a fire.

“What kind of dumbass gets caught in this weather?” the voice, soft, male, asks, as he helps Troy disrobe, unraveling the wrap that had been keeping his face warm, removing the goggles that had undoubtedly left indentations against his cheeks.

Troy shucked his gloves, his coat, everything that was becoming heavy with moisture, keeping the cool locked against him in search of the life giving heat in front of him. He toes off his boots, cringing, hissing, sure he’s broken off one of his toes in the process, but when he looks down all ten are still there, clothed by his thin socks that he regretted wearing now.

“Here,” the man says, wrapping a blanket around Troy’s shoulders, wrapping it tight, holding the front for Troy to grab. He’s remind, humorlessly, of a babe being swaddled by its mother.

He moves away, removing his own wraps, revealing a shag of black hair, sticking up at ends. His face is thin, a bit hollow at the cheeks, eyes a bit sunken, a man that looks as some who frequent apothecaries look, as if he’d drank a potion or two in his day for more of a recreational use as opposed to medicinal. One thing that’s missing is the glow of a witch. Troy had to examine him, narrow his eyes on him, taking in every part of him that he could see in the firelight.

He’s thin, but healthy, his hands are a touch blue when he removes his gloves, clearly turned by the winter day, so he wasn’t the one conjuring the storm. He wears burlap pants, and a long sleeve top, stretched, much to big for him, made of wool, something you could pick up from any vendor in the village at the base of the mountain. This man gives off the appearance of any ordinary common folk.

He smells of pine, wood, appropriate given his location, but nothing sweet, or fragrant to indicate he had magic.

Witches were easy to spot to the trained hunter. There was a white glow around them, just above their skin, snaking up their entire form, a constant, only changing when they evoked their spells. Their eyes were alight with the same magics, often changing in color with their magical type. He’d seen fire users whose eyes awoke yellow when they called upon the deities of their enchanting.

This man was as plain as plain came from head to to, he was an every man, which was probably more suspicious than being so obviously a witch. “Thank you,” Troy graciously supplies as the man gathers a kettle, pouring soup from a jar into it, placing it in the hearth.

“Thank me when you live through the night. This shit is nasty,” he says, looking towards his windows, also boarded up against the storm. “Came out of nowhere…”

“It did, didn't it?” Troy agrees, wincing against the clattering of his own teeth. “I’ve traversed these mountains several times over. Never seen you before.”

The man raises a brow, grabbing a chair from his little round wooden table just an arm’s length from where Troy sat. Now that he looked around the cabin, he noticed how plain it truly was. As he suspected, it was a two room thing with a door that inevitably led to the man’s bedroom. The room they sat in held a table, with two chairs, in front of the hearth. There was a couch behind Troy, near the door that led to the room, books scattered across it, a bookshelf next to it full of tattered tombs. A sink, a wash basin was at the opposite end, built into the corner of the room as was fashionable in this day and age. There were kettles, pots, pans, hanging from the ceiling, and a few potted plants that had been brought in, covered with sheets to protect them against the cold. To the right of that was a twine line, tight into the wall with a screw, the man’s clothing hanging to dry.

“Blunt, aren’t you?” he remarks, collapsing into the chair.

“Curious, more like,” Troy says.

“I’ve lived here for about five years now, no one visits this far up the mountain,” he shrugs, sticking his hands as close to the fire as safe.

“Again, I’ve never seen you before.”

“That an accusation,” the man says, a roll of his eyes, annoyance palpable. “You often come up to Eagle Ridge?”

Troy blinks, and then blinks again. “Eagle Ridge?”

“Yeah, dumbass, you come wandering into my yard and question me, but you don’t know where the fuck you are?”

His tongue is sharp, a serpent’s tongue, a noble, likely, having run from a life of politics; a witch would never speak so bluntly to a hunter. “I was on Bear’s Mouth…”

The man scoots his chair back a hint, playing it off as if he’s rocking back on the hind legs, watching Troy closely. Troy recognizes the move, it’s defensive, and when he looks, he sees a blade near the end of the fireplace, waiting for him to grab it and strike out. There’s no fault to be put here, as Troy would do the same if someone had just told him he’d traveled roughly twenty or so miles in a storm of this proportion without dying, especially since the storm was a newer development, and they both knew it. Troy knew Eagle Ridge, he’d had his share of travels here, the area had one of the best natural hot springs in the entirety of the mountain. At times he’d reward his men with a trip here; a show of good faith. He’d not seen a cabin here in all the years he’d spent upon these peaks.

“Bear’s Mouth, you say,” he hums, his tone suspicious of Troy.

“Tracking a witch,” he said, in attempt to placate him, eyes unmoving from his. Troy would not back down, even if the man struck at him. He was trained, he’d kill this mountain man before he could even draw that machete. Besides that, Troy was just as dubious, if not more so. “The very witch I suspect has conjured this storm.”

“Is that so?” still wary, a coyote backed into a corner, waiting to strike if Troy even so much as took a step forward. “Where abouts did you travel?”

Troy smirked. He wouldn’t give up the ranch, not to this stranger. “Andego. I always travel to Andego to climb up Bear’s Mouth.”

The man was not at ease, cynical as the moment Troy had spoken of his location. “A witch transported you here, to me? Quite convenient.”

“Indeed,” Troy smiled. “We Ottos have quite the reputation.”

It was tactless to drop his own name, but he knew the name had bearing, weight, to which most responded. This man cocked his head, eyes shifting towards the fire for a moment before whatever world had been coming down on him was lifted. He was no longer Atlas, but a man, living his life in solitude. “A hunter.”

Troy didn’t answer.

“You’ve brought a plague upon this mountain,” he says with an exhalation. “Offer me a reason not to throw you back to your death.”

Troy laughs. “Offer me a reason not to take your head.”

“Offer me a reason not to take yours,” he retorts, crossing one leg over the other, leveling his gaze on Troy.

“Quite an interesting thing, aren’t you,” he purrs, leaning forward. The man reaches for a poke, stoking the hearth, a spark flying out, hitting Troy’s bear foot, searing into his skin for the second it retains its heat.

“Whoops,” he smirks, getting up, going to gather bowls for the soup that should be more than hot. “You can bunk in for the night, but tomorrow morning you leave. Head due south, you’ll come to Longeles in about an hour. I suggest bartering for a horse, Andego is thirty miles due east from town center.”

He pours them both a helping of soup, handing one bowl to Troy, taking the other to his room, closing himself in. This man expects Troy not to kill him in the course of the evening, Troy will extend the courtesy but he expects the man to do the same.

Come morning, the man doesn’t wait, he has Troy up, pushing a square of bread into his hand with a cup of well water, offering him sustenance before he sends him out into the morning. “The storm stopped. Seems your witch gave up.”

“Seems they did,” he nods, munching down on the bread, his stomach growling with the intensity of an angry cougar. His parched throat is grateful for the clean water, greeting it with open arms, hugging it close, attempting to keep every drop of moisture within his windpipe. He doesn’t offer gratitude, it’s not expected.

The man removes his barricade from the door, tossing it open, revealing the snow covered ground, glittering in the morning sun. For such a horrendous storm, there’s hardly a dusting of snow covering the ground, it’ll barely come up to the edge of his boot when he steps out into it. Now, though, he can see what he couldn’t see yesterday.

Troy steps to the threshold, feet still bare, looking at the world around him, trees, spruce that sprung up overnight. There were in an outcropping of them, a small haven carved out simply for this man to live in. If he squinted to the west he could just make out the owl statuette that marked the beginning of the trail that lead to the hotsprings; they were exactly one mile south of it. The man had a rock face at his back, which would explain why Troy never saw this home before. If he hadn’t been looking for it, he never would have seen it; this mountain dweller had cunning.

“Trail is that way,” he pointed out, in the direction of the owl statuette.

“I appreciate your hospitality,” Troy offers in false benediction, a coo. He goes back, pulling on his boots, wrapping his coat back around his form, preparing to traverse the slick hills of the mountains in the cold of the morning. The man doesn’t offer him more food for the travel, doesn’t even offer a parting word, simply lets Troy leave before slamming the door shut, the barricade slamming firmly into place.

The man is a fool if he thinks Troy won’t be back.

 

* * *

 

A few of his men are gathered in a inn in Longeles, huddled there for the evening. Mike, Coop, Ethan, at the very least are alive and well. Three out of the party of five they’d gone out with. They say they lost sight of Timothy and Avery when the storm began, it was likely the men perished in the intensity of the storm. “We’re going back up,” Troy tells them with a smirk, giving himself only enough time to rest for a scad, munch down on a healthy portion of quail, and gather a few supplies.

None of the men are thrilled, expecting a storm to kick up as soon as they take a step onto the trail; it doesn’t.

They walk, Mike complains about his feet, they walk and Coop says he’s tired from the trek. Each step is excruciating but he’s determined to find the man who’d saved his life. To prove to himself the man was nothing but a very talented witch disguising himself as a human, and take his head as a trophy.

When they arrive at the owl statuette, Troy becomes cautious, moving into the trees, keeping his eye on the markings he’d etched into each tree bark to find his way back to the cabin. He can practically taste the victory, taste the win on his tongue, sweet like fresh raspberries ripe from the bush. Until that victory is snatched from under him like a horse haired rug, dyed in colors of red and yellows, like the one his mother had once coveted. “What are we looking for?” Mike asks.

“No!” Troy yells, turning in circles, running to the rock face, touching it, feeling it real, frozen, under his ungloved palm. He runs through the space, kicking at the ground, looking for the gravel he’d felt crunch under his boots, kicking at the wood he’d seen stacked outside the door, or the fence he’d held under his grip. There was nothing but his imagination. “It was here!”

“There’s nothing,” Coop whispers, and Troy turns a glare on him.

He has an arrow in his hand, ready to drive it into the man’s head for the snipe, because he’s angry. The cabin was here, and now it’s not, he wasn’t mistaken, he’d tracked the location. “A witch,” he hisses. The man had fooled him, played him, and was probably looking at him from behind the veil of a well done protection spell.

“Troy, we need to head back,” Timothy tells him, taking his arm, Troy shrugs him off, snapping at him, a crocodile protecting it’s land.

“Don’t touch me!”

I’ll have you, witch, just you see.

* * *

He becomes obsessed.

His prized steed is his only company as he travels the trek from Andego to Longeles every other day. It’s a long journey, a quarter of a day on his horse, half a day if he walks, which he’s had to do more than once when his father had sealed the stables from him, but he makes it.

There’s a stable in Longeles, owned by an elderly woman, Celia, who eyes him questioningly everyday, more leery of him with each passing day that he leaves behind his horse, suiting up with a pack and a machete and heading up the trail to Eagle Ridge.

The trek becomes shorter with each day he makes the climb; a blink in the grand scheme of life. He memorizes every aspect of that owl statuette. The little dippet in it’s left eye, drilled in by a tool. It’s nicked feather, three feathers down on the right, a chunk broken off. It’s tail looks sawed off at the back as if someone had taken it as a souvenir. Grease of the fingers of the few tourists make its beak blacker than the rest of it’s granite. All these things he finds, he sees, but not the cabin, never the cabin.

He sits in that alcove, waiting for something to appear that might never have been there in the first place. He takes notes, writing what he sees, sometimes building up a small fire, and standing till the sun is gone from the sky. There’s a small group of blue birds that take residence near the alcove, flying to and fro from their nest everyday, gathering food, gathering twigs, he watches them. There’s squirrels that watch him, attempt to steal things from his bag to take back to their hollowed out tree homes.

Three squirrels, four blue birds, that’s what lives here, no mountain man.

The small consolation is he gets to kill two witches in his travels, taking their talismans as trophies. One is a water elemental witch who had come to the springs for relaxation, she wore a tear drop earring in her right ear, her hair had been blonde, braided, from behind she looked so much like his mother; he took satisfaction in the kill. The other was part of Walker’s coven, the Nation, a dark haired man, gifted in earth magics, his talisman had been a beaded necklace. He’d been walking the trees, just off the trail when Troy came upon him. He let that death simmer a bit, taking his time with the kill, like a fresh chicken soup in the kettle, cooking slowly for the day; it was satisfying in a day of such discontent.

His brother is concerned, his father is apathetic, but Troy can’t stop; he needs answers.

He needs to know why the white witch’s storm had led him there, and why the cabin had disappeared so quickly. He can’t sleep without dreams haunting him of seeing that cabin linger in the distance. It’s driving him to madness, but that was the price one paid in the pursuit of knowledge. He’d rather go insane ten times over then never know about the mysterious homeowner and his vanishing cabin.

* * *

There’s only one trick left, the one Troy hated the most; requesting information of people.

He starts at the apothecaries, the man looked like he’d used tonics fairly regularly. Naturally, none of them knew what he was talking about, or who he was talking about. He was getting nowhere, fast, on the verge of a cliff that was his patience, jumping off would be a machete to the head of the next owner who told him they didn’t know anything.

“Do you mean Nicky?” a woman, blonde, out of her mind on whatever she’d consumed asked at his sixth location. The dark skinned man behind the counter had just told him he hadn’t known who Troy was describing when the girl had spoken, sauntering up to him, draping herself over him, a leech seeking blood. “That sounds like Nicky. Use to come here everyday. He got to good for us,” she pouts, pushing her bottom lip out as her fingers dance across Troy’s shoulder.

“Gloria,” the man behind the corner barks, a guard dog for this Nicky.

“Whaaaaaa..?” she slurs, swaying. “You know it’s true. He left us.”

Troy thinks if this is the company he’d once kept, he would have left too. “Do you know where, Gloria?” he smiles, a soft purr, putting a finger under her chin. Gloria flushes, searching his eyes, smiling dopily.

“If I give you a little, you give me a little,” she chitters, walking over to the counter, pounding her hand on the counter. “Another, Cal, pleeeeeeease,” she requests, banging and banging her palm against the wood, clearly unaware of how much pain she’s causing herself; Troy sees her finger begin to bleed.

Troy suspects he’s meant to pay for her next fix, offering up the coins for the golden concoction that Cal holds out. Troy snatches it away and Gloria whimpers, “I prefer to get what I want first.”

She giggles, leaning against his chest. “Such a man,” she purrs, an attempted seduction, her fingers dancing up his chest. “Nicky lives in the mountains now,” she tells him, snatching the tonic, downing it before he can get a more expansive answer.

He looks to Cal, who sighs, defeated, as Gloria wanders off, looking more woozy than high. “We don’t exactly know where he went. A few years go, his old man died, and he just, checked out, stop coming around. Next thing we know he’s moved on to the mountains, found out from his mom’s new husband, happened to bump into him.”

“And where can I find this new husband? This mom?”

Cal looked down at the coins on the counter meaningful, a silent demand for further compensation; Troy doubled him up. “Elseno, the original settlement of Longeles. Leave here, get to the end of the block, take a right, and follow down past the brothel. There’s a festival going on, you won’t miss it. The home has grey curtains.”

Troy tosses him another silver piece for his time before leaving the apothecary and it’s occupants to their self induced deaths.

As promised Elseno is having a festival, colors and banners flying, celebrating its anniversary as the first settlement, offering home grown fruits and vegetables as well as dishes cooked by the residents. Like most of Longeles, the houses are two rooms high, packed in close to each other, each with tiny balconies, most of which house florals, or plants of greens, safe to grow now that the harsh cold months have past in favor of plentiful rains. There’s stalls and stands a plenty, each set up outside a home, bearing goods, homemade scarves, jewelry, the like; a profitable time for the occupants of Elseno.

It doesn’t take Troy long to find the house with grey curtains, nestled between one with shutters and another with red curtains, a horse out front. It’s a stand out among all the other homes that had primarily kept their shutters. Outside the home is a stall, bearing journals, books, all leather bound, impressively made, pressed, bound with twine. The stale is run by a man, Troy’s height, with dark curled hair, a scruff of a beard, a young man next to him, similar in appearance except the scowl on his face, the look of a particularly nasty shark in the shallows.

Troy wanders over, looking at the journals, actually finding one he likes. The leather is a lighter color with some tanning, but it feels good in his hands, the paper is papyrus, a rarity these days for people who have moved towards using the parchment sold by big name makers.; Troy buys it. “Can I leave now, dad?” the younger man grumbles.

His father scolds him, sending Troy an apologetic look. “It’s no trouble,” Troy beams, turning on the charm. “Actually, I have a question for you, I’m looking for someone that helped me out a while back, I heard you might know him.”

The man tilts his head in inquiry.

“I believe his name is Nicholas?”

The man goes stiff, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows. The younger man looks up, eyes wide, looking from Troy and his father as if he’s expecting a great battle to break out between them; he must find it prudent to remain, his whining ceases. “I’m sorry, I don’t know that name.”

Your face says otherwise, he thinks.

He turns his attention to other customers, calling them in to look at his wares that he makes himself. Troy turns his attention to the younger man whose avoiding his gaze so hard that Troy expects to see him break his own neck. “And you? Do you know this name?”

“N-Never heard it,” he stutters, attempting to look over Troy’s head. “Mom said she’d be here after noon hour.”

“Yes, afternoon,” the father confirms, both of them making nice as Troy stands there, staring them down. There’s no choice, really, everyone around him carries arms to protect themselves from looters, or the wildlife, but one flash of the tattoo he bears on his wrist, and the elder man knows he won’t hesitate to kill those who may harbor a witch.

“We don’t want trouble,” the man says.

Troy smiles. “You shouldn’t be afraid.”

His eyes look to the younger as if silently finishing his own sentence in a poignant, he should.

The father takes his son’s wrist, pulling him back, trying to get him out of Troy’s reach. “He’s….well..Nick is..” he falters.

A voice cuts in, a heavy box dropping with it, journals flying up as it does. “My son is dead.”

Troy leans around the two men, looking to woman whose arrived, his smile growing, like a child on gift day, handed the biggest present in the lot. Her energy is flickering, a trained witch, new in her studies, unversed in the powers she was attempting to manipulate. The glow around her flickers, showcasing holes the length of it, as if it was trying to grip at a flat surface, attempting to find purchase when none was offered; he’d come back for her later. “Odd. He helped me this past season.”

“You’re mistaken,” she bites, more bitter than a unripe blackberry. He scents the air, and laughs to himself at that very smell that accompanies her flickering magic. “My son is dead, if you’ll excuse us,” she tells him, putting journals out onto the table, smiling, encouraging the young girl whose eyeing them with want to come and hold one.

Troy has enough information. He takes his journal and heads for the mountain.

He shouldn’t be surprised to see the cabin. It’s clear to him, even more so then the sights of a fog that slides away. The mother is protecting her son with a half concocted protection spell, and now that he holds something she’s touched he can see the cabin as clear as a horse in his face. The same brown fence, now opened, revealing the stones Troy has stepped out to get to his door, that’s just as open. The windows are thrown open to invite the mountain breeze into the home, and Nicholas himself stands in the yard, plow in hand, raising it above his head, striking it down into the dirt, softening the ground for planting. Troy can see seedlings already forming in the other mounds, planted before the new ones Nicholas was working on.

He wears those same burlap trousers, but wears a white undershirt, no sleeves to coat his bare arms, dirtied with the soil. His hair is slicked back, clean against his scalp as he works, grunting with the exertion of his labor. “I hope you intend to plant squash.”

For his credit, Nicholas doesn’t startle, simply looks up, holding Troy’s gaze before swinging the plow down, letting it dig into the ground before straightening, wiping sweat from his brow, smearing dirt across his forehead. “You came back,” he exhales.

Troy figures he must not know about the protection spell around his home, or he would have known Troy had come every day since the end of the cold season. “I felt I wasn’t very gracious during my last excursion.”

“I’m getting tea,” Nicholas says, and walks into his home.

 

* * *

 

They make introductions, short and sweet. “I know you’re name is Nicholas.”

“Nick,” he corrects. “I know your name is Troy.”

Before Nick is going about his cabin, unchanged since the first time Troy saw it, fixing them each a cup of tea from leaves he likely got from the town below, the kettle on the fire probably hot enough as it was already set to boil when Troy had walked in.

“I met Gloria and Cal, interesting company you’ve kept,” he says in conversation.

Nick sits across from him at the table, nursing his cup. “They’re part of my past. I was young and stupid.”

“Clearly not much as changed.”

Troy hisses as Nick kicks him hard, he’ll have a welt later in that spot. “Don’t be an asshole, I gave you tea.”

“Much obliged,” Troy nods, kicking Nick back, smirking when he bites his tongue on top of the pain to his shin. “A past you didn’t care to revisit.”

“They don’t understand me. No one does,” he says, looking off to his right. “You could say I’m chased by the shadows of my past. Up here, I’m free…” he tells him, watching wistfully as a bluebird lands on his fence, whistling a song. Troy knows the look, he’s sure he’s had it on his face several dozen times over his life. The look that cried for the key to his cage, to be set free to fly to the heavens, without the courage to open it himself.

“I thought you were a witch..”

Nick looks at him.

“Your mother is.”

Nick scoffs. “My mom doesn’t have the fortitude for magic, believe me.”

Troy smiles. “I’ll have to kill her, and the little family that harbors her.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Nick tells him, sipping his tea. “If my mom is a practitioner, it’s not by intention, she really doesn't have the strength to perform magic, it’d eat her from the inside out. But, if you really need to kill someone, there’s a coven about five miles south east of here, their leader’s name is Walker, they’re gifted in shape shifting magics.”

“Walker is on my radar,” Troy tells him. “You could say he and my father have quite the history.”

“Oh? Not breaking bread anytime soon?”

“Not in this lifetime,” Troy chuckles. “They’re called skin-walkers, Walkers people, the magic they use, I’d keep to your coven. Your mother’s magic may be weak, but it’ll protect you within the grounds.”

Nick rolls his eyes, still unconvinced of his mother’s magics. :”I have work to finish. Finish your tea then get the hell out.”

Troy laughs.

 

* * *

 

He goes back. With the journal in his possession, he can find Nick no trouble.

They share tea, different blends that Nick gets from the village. Troy learns that he makes regular treks down, at least once every seven days to buy things like leaves, food that he can’t grow, meat that can’t be hunted, new clothing when his old ones become unusable. He sticks to different regions, on the opposite side of the city, well away from Elseno as he seems to have no desire to see his mother. Nick has a sister, younger than him, who furthered her education at an institute of the church. “She’s much smarter than I am, made better choices,” he informs Troy.

Troy shares his brother is also the good child. “Didn’t take up hunting, as I did, but education,” he shares. “My brother, ever the optimist, believes that witches and humans alike could live in harmony. He negotiates regularly with Walker and the Nation.”

They hardly touch on their parents. Nick’s father is dead. Troy’s mother is dead.

There’s a kinship between them, when they’re not being combative. More than once they’ve squabbled, over the tiniest of slights. Troy insults Nick’s bow work, and Nick tackles him, going after one of his prized journals, ripping away years worth of notes on witches he hunted. Troy says Nick needs his mother to protect him from the evils of the world, and Nick punches him, straight in the jaw; it swells and smarts for three days after.

He’s fixated on Nick, and he has no intention of stopping.

 

* * *

 

“My father died,” Troy says, no segue into a conversation, no kindly greeting, or snarked slight. He pushes into Nick’s home, sitting on the couch as he’d done so many times in their friendship, but tonight it’s to soft, the feathers within having lost their stiffness in favor of letting him sink into the ground, in the way people imagined the working of quick sands to be like. He’s empty, dead with his father who’d stop clawing at life, just as the leaves of the trees began to change. There’s a hole in his heart, something that’s big, wild, circling, a voice telling him he’s free, while that childishness of his heart clings to the man who’d kept him close out of fear for what Troy is.

He was always mentally unstable.

They cry, like people, he’d told his brother of rabbits. He’d cut, sliced at the skin of witch’s wanting to know more, wanting to know what made them tick, even at a young age. There was no mother, no basement to house the evils of his heart his father so feared. There was just the chains that Jeremiah senior had crafted with words, over and over, a metronome, till Troy complied. Now he was gone, the iron broken, and Troy didn’t know how to feel.

“My brother is handling his burial.”

Nick offers him tea. No condolences. No assuage, just the silence of his companionship.

“I’m not going,” Troy continues, Nick sips his tea, eyeing him over the top, a hawk eyeing his prey. “What should I feel?”

“Can’t answer that,” Nick tells him.

There was a number of things Troy felt, but none of them to do with his father, but the world. He’d been angry, he supposed. Angry at Mike, who was just back at the ranch that now belonged to Troy, heading it with his father, his mother, the entire Trimbol clan like they had the rights to it. Mike, who looked at Troy with fear, like the rabbits, eyes wide as they looked upon their reaper within the last breaths. Troy couldn’t kill them, the whole family, not while Jake was there, ever vigilant, but that didn’t stop Troy for going after a coven, small, to the south, and killing the lot of them, letting his blade strike true till there was nothing left in his heads but the screams of the vile creatures as they pleaded for their lives. He needed someone to blame, he knew that.

But underneath that, there was hurt, slow, and aching, a drip, like rain in a bucket from a cracked ceiling. He just didn’t want to feel, but also feel, he was confused, and it made his head heavier than a blacksmith’s anvil.

“How about we get you cleaned up?” Nick offers, taking their tea--Troy’s untouched--leading him to his bedroom, the room Troy had never seen. It’s small. A bed made for one against the wall in front of him when they entered. There’s a window in front of it, shuttered like the other’s of the home, there’s a chest for clothing, and a rocking chair that acted as the home to most of Nick’s garments. Nick leads him on to a door that leads to a small room for bathing, a large basin sitting next to a toilet, rather modern for this little cabin.

Nick leads him over to a tiny stool next to the large washing basin, he pumps water into it, five pumps, enough water to clean Troy three times over. He has a rag, a rough wool rag that he moistens, using it to wipe the blood from Troy’s brow. He stares as Nick kneels in front of him, methodically going about cleaning the blood of witches from Troy’s skin.

Dip. Wipe. Dip. Wipe. Ringing out the water in between, the sound of the sloshing the only thing between them as he works. “You and I,” Nick says softly, now the lion stalking a doe; Troy is in the hooves of a doe. “We’re more alike than you think..”

Troy scoffs. “Black sheep?” he responds, Nick’s eyes adverting from him, saying more than words could. Nick wrings out the rag, going to wipe Troy’s face again, stopping at his chin. Their eyes lock, Troy’s gaze fixing on the dark brown of Nick’s iris, so dark, almost indistinguishable from the pupil. There’s a sweet sold amongst confectionaries in cities, cocoa, cooked, cooled into a bark, sometimes sweetened with sugar, other times not, and Nick’s eyes, are quite like that bark. A dark cocoa, bitter, like Troy’s own thoughts, his own soul. Those eyes that read pain, mercy, darkness, self destruction, so many things they can’t say, but they feel everyday of their lives, a never ending battle that even the bliss of death won’t end. “Children of violence.”

Nick gives him a half smile, a cock to the right side of his lips before he’s lifting up, pressing his lips to Troy’s gently, exhaling against his lips. Troy tilts his head in invitation of the exchange, closing his eyes, letting him fall into the dark abyss, as if he were standing on the mountain’s highest peak, opening his arms, and letting the embrace of the open sky take him.

Kissing Nick is the epiphany he never knew he needed.

When he lays with Nick it’s like a benediction, a concession he didn’t know he needed to make. Every touch, every caress, is like the pluck of a viola’s strings, playing a medley that has him arching, chasing the pleasure of the music being played out upon his body.

Nick is skilled, an artist, using Troy’s body in the way a artist uses a brush on canvas. He’s not mindful of his own pleasure, just Troy’s, attempting to free his mind from the tumultuous thoughts within that were ever unceasing. He opens the floodgates, blows a carefully constructed river dam of Troy’s inner workings to pieces as he lets Troy take his body, hurting him in ways he can’t hurt himself. They’re both weak in their own way, trapped in houses of their own design, their only freedoms at the hands of each other. The callused, warn hands, that read so much more than any vocalization ever would.

When the wave crests, a torrential storm ending with the call of a gull, they stare at each other, breathing the other in, letting the silence speak for them.

This is their suicide note, an approbation.

The end would be together.

 

* * *

 

All good things were destined to end in Troy’s life.

It happens in one heart stopping moment.

Their relationship had changed, developed into a chimerical beast, out of control, powerful. The progressive course was to show Nick his world, to show Nick who he was, who Jake was, who the Trimbols were. What Troy was willing to burn to the ground in favor of Nick’s hand in his. It’s an off-handed comment, behind his back, snappish, meant to bite, “His faggotry prevails,” Mike whispers to one of the men, Jacob, that would concur.

Mike was a coward, he always would be. All Troy wanted was for Mike to say that while staring him in the eye, to stand and face him like the man he proclaimed to be. The Trimbols wanted to reside within the ranch, to command it, yet, Mike shied from him, took a step back, afraid of Troy’s ire. Troy raised his machete, a justice well deserved, until it didn’t happen, and his blade was halted in the air by the force of magic.

He turned, whipped with the gail force of a tornado to Nick, who stood there, hand outstretched, eyes wide, as if he hadn’t realized what he’d done, then he was gone as if he’d never stood there.

“Exile!” Mike called, suddenly finding his courage. “Troy has brought a witch into this camp!”

“Unstable..”

“Unhinged,” they shouted, calling for him to be tossed out, not even Jake’s words being a saviour for him this time. They’d seen the evil in his heart, seen him ready to kill Mike, ending his miserable existence once and for all.

Troy didn’t care, he had another target in mind.

 

* * *

 

The cabin was there, untouched, but Nick was wise not to return.

Troy tore it to shreds, stabbing the couch till nothing but the feathers remained. He overturned the bookcase, the books scattered across the floor, kicking them, burning them, letting the brunt of his anger carry him until there was nothing left but tears of betrayal.

“I was going to tell you,” Nicks voice comes from the doorway, and Troy throws his machete before he has time to think about it, acting on instinct for the creatures of hell he so despised; it never finds it mark, phasing through as if Nick wasn’t there at all.

“What are you?” he groused, looking at Nick, head to toe, still seeing no glow, unnatural, every witch, even Walker could not hide the glow of their magic. “What was this..?”

“More than I anticipated. I fully intended to kill you that first night you were here, then the second one, you came with a journal from my mom’s stand, so many times I said I’d kill you, but I didn’t. ‘Next time, Nick’, I kept telling myself, ‘wait for your moment’, then you got under my skin, and I hate you for that,” Nick tells him, just above a whispers, barely louder than the bluebird song being sang from the window. “A hunter appeared in a storm my mom had devised with the help of Walker. I was sure she sent you to find me, bring me back, but you never did.”

“I knew you were a witch, I knew it,” he spat, spitting at Nick’s feet. “What are you?” he bit out, hands itching to grab at the knife in his chest, his heart burning with an ache he’d never experienced in his near thirty years of life; an indescribable, unending throbbing.

“A necromancer.”

Troy stumbled back, something like fear having him trembling as he saw Nick in a new light. Necromancers were a myth, even in the covens, as one of the darkest magics to ever having existed in this world. There were rumors that once a lord of the dead had come to the earth to obtain a bride, but it was all stories, the dead rising to walk amongst the living was nothing but that, stories. “I want to see!” he demanded before his resolve could break faster than a cracked window.

“Troy…”

“SHOW ME!” he shouted.

Nick sighed, holding out his hand; Troy recoiled. “You have to keep hold of me, if you don’t the dead will consume you.”

Troy hesitated before taking the hand he’d held so many times in passion. It felt different now, alien, like his mother’s hand, a hand that never held his in love but necessity, appearance, this was not the Nick he thought was his.

“This way,” Nick whispered, leading him out the open door to the outside which looked unchanged except a man standing by Nick’s wood rack, looking towards the bluebird on the window seal. He was dressed in a blue top, burlap pants, his hair like Nick’s, thin, sticking up in places he couldn’t control, his skin a light brown color, darker than Nick himself; there was a familiarity to him.

The man turned when they exited, smiling congenially. “Troy,” he nodded.

“You can talk to him,” Nick informs him as they walk, the other man following. “He’s my father.”

“If it’s any consolation, I told Nick he should have told you after that first coupling,” Steven chirps, keeping pace with them as they travel down the mountain. Troy startles back when one of Walker’s men, the one he killed charges at him, screaming at him, cursing his name. Nick tightens his grip on his hand, eyes closing for the briefest second before the figure disappears into a breeze like mist.

“What did you do?!”

“Just sent him somewhere else, he’ll find his way back,” Nick explained as they continued the trek down into the city of Longeles, the city populated more heavily than Troy had ever seen. The only difference was that several of the figures were lighter than the others, incorporeal, walking through the citizens of the world, walking through the buildings, a dull blue glow to them.

It’s not what Troy was expecting. Rotting flesh, bared bones, bleeding, melting, glaring out at the living as if they’d done them wrong by still being here when they no longer were. Walking through this plain, with these figures felt warm and inviting in an unsettling way.

“They’re harmless, to me,” Nick says. “If you break our connection, they’ll consume you.”

“It’s not what I expected,” he confesses, looking around. “How did you learn to do this? How long did you train?”

“I didn’t. I was born this way, since before I can remember I always saw the two worlds, just like this, before I could control it, this is how I always saw the world. The dead and the living, mixing, it’s why I started abusing tonics, I wanted it to stop, and when I was high, I didn’t have to deal, it was just there, my everyday. When dad died, and came to me, mom figured out what I was, figured out I had magics.”

“You were hiding from your mother. You set the protection spells.”

Nick nodded. “Among other people, like a group of hunters called the Proctors. Which I confess, I thought you might be working for them. I watched you everyday you came back, looking for me.”

Troy glared, agitated, annoyed, but oddly endeared by the man he held such strong feelings for. “I’m familiar. I’ve heard rumors from the southern regions that the Proctors like to collect witches they find to be useful. A necromancer, you would be...if the rumors were to be believed…”

Nick cast him a glance as they walked. “Rumors that necromancers could raise even the dead from the graves. Yes, it’s true, I can do it.”

Troy hissed, tugging on Nick’s hand but he held true, refusing to let him escape.

“But they’re not like these dead. The dead you see here, they’re in the world in between, for whatever reason, they remain, either for family, or due to unfinished work on the earthly plane, or they’re just waiting. Helping them talk, communicate to the other-side is easy. What the Proctors would want is something that is unholy..”

“Your magic is unholy.”

“Shut up, dick, I’m trying to explain,” Nick cursed, stomping his foot, Troy yelped. “When you raise a body from the dead, it’s what is called a ghoul. I’m forcing a soul back into a rotting corpse and where that soul comes from is not easy to determine. From this plane, or even crossed over, the further gone they are, the harder it is to pull them back, and wouldn’t you be pissed off if someone called you from an eternal slumber?”

“So they attack you?”

“Not me. Necromancy isn’t so easy, Otto. I need a living tether to raise the dead. What the Proctors don’t realize, what my mom doesn’t realize, is that they don’t function like people. They don’t take orders, when the dead walk again, all they can think is to eat. They react to sounds, to movement, and they attack…”

Troy looked at the look on Nick’s face, the way his eyes were downcast, lost in memories. “You’ve done it before.”

“Once. Before I came here I went south, found a small village, it was called Colonia, I hid there. They were kind to me, but there were in a feud with a group of overlords, and one of the children, they didn’t realize what they were saying when they gossiped that I could talk to the dead,” he spoke, illustrating with his free hand. “I just wanted to comfort a little girl who’d lost her father. Next thing I know they’re there for me, taking me in the middle of the night to a cemetery, demanding an army of the undead, an unstoppable force.”

“You did it…”

Nick nods. “They ate them, tore them limb from limb, it was a feeding frenzy, every ghoul trying to get at the living person, until their blood ran cold or there was nothing left. I couldn’t stop them so soon after bringing them back, not before they got to Colonia.I tried….I tried to stop them, tried to get the people out….the way they looked at me….”

“A bringer of death,” Troy surmised, his heart reaching out for Nick, reaching out for the broken man that was so like him, wanting to soothe this person who meant so much to him. “You ran away, like a bitch.”

“Not a bitch..”

“A bitch with it’s tail between its leg,” Troy amended.

“Think of all the dead, Troy, that day I only pulled twenty from their graves, but next time someone could push me to raise hundreds, thousands, till they over run the earth. In the wrong hands, my power could see that the dead outnumber the living. I walk among the dead, Troy, you see me now, for what I am.”

“Yeah, I do.”

 

* * *

 

Life changes.

He doesn’t go back to Nick. “If you care for me, you’ll find me,” he tells him, offering a parting kiss, a final goodbye.

He doesn’t go back to the ranch. He writes to Jake, who replies he misses Troy dearly, hoping they’ll see each other again one day; Troy promises to write.

He finds his own path, his own start somewhere that’s not Andego or Longeles, or the mountain that acted as the gingerbread home of a fairytale, drawing him in and keeping him lost till the end of his existence.

Troy understands now, how Nick could just disappear, as Troy sets out to do the same. He finds an island, a home that’s distinctly his, empty, void of the living, void of the dead, off shore. There’s a village, Sarita, a half day’s travel by the boat he buys.

It’s a different life then what he’s lived before, solitary, but not lonely. He builds his home with his own hands, sleeping beneath the stars, cooking by fire like so often he’d done during hunts. He doesn’t think of witches, doesn’t let his thoughts dwell on them. He finds a book on alchemy in a book store in Sarita and spends his days in his studies.

It’s meticulous labor.

Add a roof one day, on to his studies the next. A systematic rhythm, with a goal in mind to finish before the harsher months set in yet again. He builds. He studies. Scrupulous in his pursuits, until the day he has a life, that’s his own. Not Jeremiah Otto’s, not Nick Clarks, but Troy Otto’s, a hand of cards dealt by fate itself.

A hand he’s happy to play.

 

 

 

 

**-epilogue-**

The storm is raging, the wind howling incessantly, a banshee, combing for a stray soul, rattling against the closed shutters of his windows, demanding entry that he wouldn’t permit. The waters would be high by morning, urgency would be necessary to get wood in before the next change of the weather, the cold over taking the crisp cools of the late season.

At the very least, he’d been to town the day before the storm was meant to come, he had food, meat, fruit he could scrounge for the island in trade for small swatches of fabric he made from the cocoon of worms that inhabited his home plot. He’d be fine here, at least until it passed, until the rage that had one mirrored his own had subsided. All he needed was to throw a log into the flames, allow the fire to fill his home with warmth.

Troy was happy here, with his tomes on alchemy, and the silence in the absence of oppressive expectations.

It’s unexpected when this is all shattered by one hard knock at his front door, a traveler, who clearly thought it wise to brave the seas in this storm, perhaps over turning his vessel in the process none of which was Troy’s concern. Then he remembered, over four seasons ago, when he’d been that traveler, lost in the whirlwind of magic, and found by the man that owned a piece of heart, even to this day. Perhaps, fate was here to smile upon him, offering him a second chance, when he had not asked for one.

He clambers over, lifting the latch, opening the door to the stranger who is no stranger. “Found you,” Nick smiles, pushing into Troy’s home as if he owns the place. He removes his coat, tossing it near the fire, shaking his hair out, wet from the rain.

There’s no precursor to his actions, the moment the door is closed Nick is on him, a panther diving high from a limb to encase a boar in it’s grip; Troy is the boar.

Nick’s kiss is all consuming, open mouthed, wet as he seeks to reconcile all those emotions that melted in the pot of their love all those seasons ago. The way Nick kisses is a prayer all to itself, slow but desperate, all open mouth, sharing of life without the forcefulness of his tongue. His hands hold Troy to him, guiding him through the motions they knew so well, urging his participation.

Unlike Nick, Troy is not so gentle when it comes to an exchange of affection. A part of him harbors resentment towards Nick for lying, for his betrayal, and that part has him grabbing fists of Nick’s hair, pulling him closer, shoving his tongue into the other man’s mouth as if to choke him with it. As if the secondary goal is to claim every part of Nick’s mouth, the roof, his teeth, his own tongue, which pushes at Troy, fighting in a dominance that was more violent than passionate.

When he pulls back he bites at Nick’s lip, drawing blood, bright red, pure, clean. He grabs Nick’s face in a vice, bruising his cheeks in the way he forces Nick to look at him. “You came because you love me…”

Nick rolls his eyes, going for Troy’s shirt, his pants, anything to sate the hunger, the lust they feel for each other.

Troy refuses to let him, forcing his attention back to Troy’s eyes, forcing him to speak the words they knew to be true, even before Troy found out Nick was a witch; the darkest of practitioners. “Tell me, Nicky...say it..” he demands, needing to hear the truth of it.

He knows it’s hard, it’s hard for Troy to see Nick here, to have him within his grasp once again. It’s hard to reconcile the feelings he knows to be true, and how they eat at him, like a parasite, clinging to their souls, eating them from the heart to the brain. “I love you,” Nick says, breaking free, grabbing Troy’s hair, pulling him down, biting his lip just as hard. “I love you, Troy.”

Only they could make a confession of the purest form sound like a simultaneous and pointed ‘fuck you’.

He folds, lets Nick force him into the wall, slamming him back till his bones climbing up his back ache with the bite of the wood. Nick hisses, growls, feral, pulling Troy’s black top over his head, tossing it away, clawing up his chest, nails digging into his skin, leaving their trails, a mark of ownership. Troy is not so kind to Nick’s clothing, finding the seam of the fancy cotton piece he wore, ripping it to shreds, letting it falling away to leave him free to pinch his lover’s nipples between thumb and forefinger, pulling brutally, tugging till Nick is moving closer, uttering sounds between pleasure and pain, being promptly rewarded with a soft massage, a brush of a thumb to soothe.

This is not sex, this is a war. A witch versus his hunter, only one will be the victor.

Nick bites his neck, breaking the skin, sharper than a dagger’s blade, far more final than death. Nothing about their battle is loving, affectionate, its all about power and there is no greater power than dominating one’s power. Troy knows that, he toys with Nick, a cat circling a mouse, just waiting till it’s back is turned to drag it away by its tail. One small slip, and Nick is being forced face down onto the rough wood of Troy’s table. The span of a blink is all it takes for Troy to have the upper hand, to have a win over the precocious little necromancer.

His arm is a weight against Nick’s neck, holding him down with the full brunt of twenty years of training, keeping him from kicking free, forcing him to lay there as Troy takes what he wants. Neither of them acknowledge how simple it would be for Nick to use magic, to toss Troy aside, to have their positions switched in a matter of seconds. Troy encourages, taunts it, “Come on, little witch, that all you got in you,” he purrs, licking a path from shoulder to ear, nipping the lobe to an approving groan.

They both know Troy’s not on that table because Nick doesn’t want him on that table; Nick wants to be punished, knows he needs to be punished.

Troy pulls Nick’s pants down, his undergarments. He unties his own, freeing the arousal that throbbed in anticipation of their coupling. It’s swift, one single push, and he’s buried in the tight hilt of Nick’s body. Nick screams, cries out, but it’s him that moves against Troy, pushing back, rolling his hips to get Troy into action. When he does, he does, slamming into Nick, releasing him, only to grab his hips and take his pleasure, each thrust deeper, each slam of his hips harder taking nothing but his own ecstacy from the tight constriction of Nick’s body.

The table is sure to break under their power, the legs wobbling precariously at each rock of their hips, each stroke of their copulation sends it scooting that much closer to the wall of Troy’s home.

He wants this, Nick wants this, and it’s perfect, every blissful second until Troy is reaching his completion, filling Nick in the most intimate way possible, moaning his approval at the drop of Nick’s seed that leeks to the floor, the pants as he attempts to catch his breath, the whimper in refusal to move where he lay pinned to the table by Troy’s weight. “You’re perfect, Nicky,” he whispered, kissing Nick’s back, all the way up to his nape, his eyes closing, begging whoever would listen that this not be a dream. “I love you. I love you so damn much,” he curses, not wanting to pull from where they’re joined, not wanting this to end.

As if the confession is an invocation, he feels magic swirl him, surround him, pulling him into a gossamer of warmth that spoke of safety.

Nick chuckles beneath him, a chuckle that turns into a maniacal laugh. He pushes, till he can stand, his back against Troy’s chest, his arm around around the back of Troy’s neck, pulling him down to close their mouths against each other’s again. “You’re mine now, Otto.”

Binding magic is strong. Powerful. Impossible to break.

Troy smirks, returning the kiss, arms tighter than ropes around Nick’s waist, keeping him close. Nick never has to know he’s the one that chanted the spell, invoked the magic, born from alchemy to make this bond. “No, Clark, you’re mine.”

This is what a storm brings.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed! All comments and kudos are super appreciated!


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